This invention relates generally to knowledge management systems, and particularly to the development, use and maintenance of knowledge base systems.
One environment in which knowledge management systems are particularly useful is the computer product support industry. The computer systems on today""s desktops are complicated. They involve many products (hardware and software) from many vendors. The products may or may not operate as expected when configured into a system. In addition, the user guides and references for the products are often incomplete and not always accurate. When end users have problems with their computer systems, they often need help diagnosing and then solving the problem. The computer product support industry has developed in response to that need. When a caller into a technical support organization reports a problem with a product in a certain environment, a technical support representative, sometimes known as an agent, diagnoses and attempts to solve the problem.
However, a mountain of knowledge is necessary in order to provide support for computer products. End users"" answers might be found in a public document, or in a customer""s or vendor""s confidential information, or in a company""s bank of general or confidential knowledge. In addition, through support interactions, a company generates a vast array of knowledge, particularly in areas such as product interoperability. Knowledge is always being generated because the resolution to an end user""s problem may even need to pieced together from many sources of information, public and private combined.
A computer product support provider""s challenge is to handle the increasing technical complexity of support delivery while keeping service quality and customer satisfaction high and costs low. Companies must establish a support infrastructure that enable them to capture, refine, and publish customer service and support information with greater efficiency through a variety of support channels. Adopting a knowledge management approach is an effective means to meet urgent customer demands.
One part of the knowledge management approach is the development and maintenance of knowledge bases as a part of a company""s knowledge management system. With the proliferation of information that is needed to run businesses today, many companies are turning to knowledge base systems to store and provide access to its information. Knowledge bases provide a framework for collecting, organizing and refining the full range of information that is both collected and generated daily by a company. Knowledge bases process the new information, transforming it into actionable knowledge, present it in a consistent format, and make it readily available. They make a company increasingly effective in gathering and leveraging xe2x80x9cinstitutional memory.xe2x80x9d Thus, knowledge bases provide a company with the opportunity to reuse the knowledge that it collects and creates. Such reuse is beneficial because it allows companies to use its data to conduct is business more quickly and efficiently than previously possible.
While knowledge bases provide some real benefit to companies that invest in their creation, they are expensive in time, resources and money to develop and maintain. Once deployed, knowledge bases need careful maintenance to keep up to date. Knowledge, being dynamic, is always being created and collected. Typically only a fraction of the knowledge developed by an entity is captured and reused. The use of the knowledge base itself can result in the creation of new knowledge and therefore new content for the knowledge base. Therefore, it is essential to keep them updated. However, since it is complicated and expensive to update knowledge bases system, knowledge bases often go outdated almost immediately. The company""s challenge is to handle the increasing technical complexity of the knowledge it develops and collects, while keeping costs low.
Typically, also, even when the knowledge is captured in a knowledge base, it is not incorporated into the knowledge base at an appropriate level of abstraction. Often, specific instantiations of the knowledge are added, resulting in a knowledge base that is cumbersome to search and hard to maintain. If the information is generalized too much, appropriate resolutions will not be presented in response to queries.
It is therefore an object to treat knowledge as an asset that provides a substantial competitive advantage, and to leverage knowledge to improve customer satisfaction. It is an object of this invention to develop knowledge management systems that allow a company to manage the knowledge it collects and creates, make it available for use it in conjunction with the other systems and processes used by the company, and monitor its use. It is also an object to develop operational processes for keeping the knowledge base updated. Finally, it is an object of this invention to provide systems for generalizing knowledge as much as possible and for modifying a knowledge base only as much as is needed to add new knowledge and ease technology reuse.
In accordance with the present invention, there is described a method of managing a knowledge base in which knowledge is stored in a plurality of knowledge objects. Knowledge authors incorporate new knowledge into the knowledge base by creating authoring output, and knowledge analysts manage content in the knowledge base. The authors use authoring conventions and guides to add uniformity to the knowledge objects, the authoring conventions and guides having definitions of the knowledge objects, guidelines for format and development of the knowledge objects, and guidelines for use of synonyms to capture alternative statements of the knowledge objects. The knowledge analysts manage content by managing backlog of the new knowledge awaiting entry into the knowledge base, by providing to the authors feedback concerning the knowledge base from users of the knowledge base and from beneficiaries of the knowledge base, and by reviewing the authoring output for technical accuracy, for adherence with the definitions and guidelines articulated in the authoring conventions and guides, for usability in the knowledge base, and for responsiveness by the author to the feedback.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, there is described a method of managing a knowledge base in which knowledge is stored in a plurality of knowledge objects, involving the following steps: developing authoring conventions and guides to add uniformity to the knowledge objects, providing a reporting system for creating reports of need for new content in the knowledge base; reviewing the reports and, if incorporation of the new content into the knowledge base is indicated, incorporating the new content into the knowledge objects of the knowledge base. The method also involves managing the backlog of new knowledge awaiting entry into the knowledge base and providing a feedback system for feedback concerning the knowledge base from beneficiaries of the knowledge base.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, there s described a knowledge maintenance system for a knowledge base in which knowledge is stored in knowledge objects, having a user reporting system for users to report instances of potential need for new content in the knowledge base, and a new content management system to review any the reports of the potential need and, if incorporation of the new content into the knowledge base is indicated, to incorporate the new content into new knowledge in the knowledge base.
The new content management system involves a first pass review having a subject matter review of the report to select the instances that are appropriate candidates for the new content with a comparison of the new content against existing content in the knowledge base.
The new content management system also has a backlog management system to manage a backlog of the new content awaiting entry into the knowledge base, an authoring system for authoring the new content into the new knowledge, and a new knowledge entry review system for reviewing the new knowledge.
In one embodiment, the user reporting system has a knowledge notes memo capability in the knowledge base for sending a memo reporting a knowledge base use experience and a draft memo capability for saving an incomplete experience report memo for later completion.